Theta Labs Launches Its Blockchain Video Delivery Platform in Beta

Theta Labs is moving forward with its vision of democratizing content delivery with the beta release of its decentralized video streaming platform.

Announced Thursday, the Theta Edgecast platform aims to reward its users while lowering cost of video content delivery by using a distributed network.

Edgecast is a decentralized application (dapp) built on Theta’s peer-to-peer video blockchain technology, powered by the Theta Edge Network. According to the announcement, the network currently consists of over 2,690 nodes worldwide.

Building a decentralized video platform has been the firm's core aim since 2017, said Theta Labs CEO Mitch Liu. "Our core thesis was to build a fully decentralized video infrastructure that would drive more benefit to each key stakeholder in the video streaming value chain."

The dapp allows for the capture of video, transcoding it in real time before caching and relaying that content to users globally. The network is also responsible for powering the firm's esports streaming platform Theta.tv.

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"Unlike other video platforms this means Edgecast does not feature a single centralized server or service," said Liu. "This is a huge accomplishment and a huge challenge."

As part of the launch, The World Poker Tour will offer around-the-clock content on Theta Edgecast, meaning users can watch games directly from the platform.

In May of this year, Google linked up with Theta Labs to assist the video delivery network by onboarding users through Google Cloud. The tech giant also provided help to Theta with its mainnet 2.0 launch.